Tag: opinion

Being “Seen” isn’t Always Good, Especially When Nothing Comes Back

Post author By jrlsage
Post date July 5, 2016

A glance doesn’t mean an understanding.

On Facebook Messenger, by default, has read receipts.

A read receipt is a notification to the sender of a message that the receiver saw it. While this has some practical applications (say certified mail), having this as a default has a profound psychological result.

When something is “seen” with no response, we create opinions.

“Creating” isn’t good because we default to negative, which means terrible ideas.

Ideas like:

That person doesn’t like me.
They don’t care about what I have to say.
Maybe my opinion wasn’t necessary.

We internalize those ideas, and they turn into feelings.

The negative feelings start small and then grow into something uglier later.

The good news is that by reading this, you are aware.

There are tools to short-circuit the negative response.

Tags growth, internal, negative, opinion, starting small

Blog Post

Lucky or Good?

Post author By jrlsage
Post date June 6, 2016

Don’t confuse the two.

There is a difference between lucky and good. Usually, the difference between the two is consistency, meaning that once you do something, you can repeat it, given the same environment.

Another point, which is often missed, is the ability to understand* why something worked while accounting for the other side.

Let’s take football:

If you are playing wide receiver , the ball is coming at you, and someone is covering you, simply catching the ball once can skew towards luck in the future.
o Working on routes with the QB and understanding where the cornerback is going due to how he comes off the ball lead you to catch more often, which is good.

The latter accounts for the work done on the practice field; the former has no strategy. If you were looking for a coach on how to catch the ball, which person would you feel more comfortable going to?

Unfortunately, a lot of people who are lucky confuse it for being good, and the results are frightening.

*I first wrote explain at this asterisk, and I recognized that you didn’t need to explain to understand. Keeping it on a sports level, Moses Malone couldn’t “explain” rebounding to you, but he was amazing at it because he understood it.

Tags bullshit, football, good, industrial, lucky, opinion, thinking, understand

Blog Post

Tribe Costs

Post author By jrlsage
Post date November 29, 2015

Great tribes enhance the people inside of them, they listen and try to understand the world around them.

The bad tribe does the opposite. Instead of growth, it emphasizes fear.

Both have a cost.

When you put yourself in a tribe, it doesn’t come free. You sacrifice some of your own opinion. No such thing as a free lunch.

If you are aware of the sacrifice, make it count.

Tags decide, opinion, tribes